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Sunday, September 30, 2001 |
By Walter F. Naedele
INQUIRER STAFF
WRITER
The tragedies of Sept. 11 clouded the annual Steuben parade in Philadelphia yesterday.
Not one of the four civilian bands that had been scheduled to come from Germany to march was able to attend.
"That's the largest [number] we've had cancel" in any year, Al Taubenberger, general chairman of the event, said at the end of the 31st annual German-American Steuben Parade.
Taubenberger said he understood the bands had canceled over travel fears.
That was certainly the case for a band from Krefeld, the city from which the first German-speaking immigrants arrived in Philadelphia in 1683.
"We have many young people and children in our band," Wolfram Beudgen, manager of the Krefeld band, said. "They or their parents were afraid."
So Beudgen and two of his musicians came to express regrets. And to hope for next year.
The parade honors the memory of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, whom historians credit with turning George Washington's ragtag troops into the professional army that won the Revolutionary War.
Yesterday, organizers said the parade, which began at 20th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and wound through Center City to end at Logan Square, attracted about 100 units and more than 1,000 marchers.
Among the classiest, in light-gray uniforms and red berets, was the 40-member Heeresmusikkorps 4 der Bundeswehr, stationed in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, whose leader said it was one of 14 marching bands in the German Army.
It was the only band from Germany that made it to Philadelphia yesterday, Taubenberger said.
Nancy Schatz, Miss German American of New York and New Jersey, attended on a parade float of her own. She wore a floor-length white gown.
It was to be the only parade for her this year because the Steuben parade in Manhattan was canceled. The day provided a welcome break for Schatz, 24, of Rego Park, Queens, a New York City police officer.
Yesterday was only "my second day off since Sept. 11," Schatz said, a stretch of 12-hour shifts working traffic control in Lower Manhattan.
The final marchers at the end of the 21/2-hour parade were 14 firefighters from Munich and three from Bregenz, Austria.
"We originally had 35 to come over, but because of what happened in New York, only 14 made the trip" from Munich, said Karl Blank, a retired lieutenant of the Philadelphia Fire Department and founder of the German American Firefighters Association, which has members in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
Guenther Wegelin, 63, one of the three Austrians, said that earlier in the week they had delivered to New York City firefighters money collected from the citizens of Bregenz for families of the victims of the attacks.
Yesterday, as they and the other final units of the parade stood at attention, a moment of silence was observed to honor all those who died on Sept. 11.